Description

When his agent re-brands him as ‘Tamara Wilde, Mistress of Cosy Crime’, Graham Tomlinson, thriller-writer, faces more than a literary challenge. Who is he really?

In his Yorkshire Noir novels he’d explored the mean streets of Huddersfield, but now he finds himself in a Cotswold village trying to discover what this ‘cosy’ is all about.

Awaiting him is Flitchcombe-on-the-Water, a pastoral idyll with dark secrets whose inhabitants seem to be auditioning for him – the local Book Group especially . . . But if he is using them, are they using him? Will he become the scapegoat for the village’s crimes? When his researches uncover more than they should, he finds himself trapped in his own plot – as victim, detective – and murderer.

And he’ll need all of Tamara’s guile and ingenuity to survive . . .

At this official launch, David Fairer will be in conversation with Sarah Greenan.

David Fairer is Professor of English at the University of Leeds. He is the author of three murder mysteries set in Queen Anne’s London: Chocolate House Treason (2019), The Devil’s Cathedral (2021), and Captain Hazard’s Game (2022). His new novel, Graham and the Flitchcombe Murders, is his take on the current craze for cosy crime.
David explains: “Cosy crime is inordinately popular right now, on film and TV also. Richard Osman especially has given it vast publicity. I love cosy crime but deplore how the genre is treated as something lightweight and escapist. It needn’t be. It can tackle major themes with humour and be of distinctive literary value. In Graham and the Flitchcombe Murders I’ve aimed to write a classic of the genre while being amused by its conventions.